All Hail

Hail to the Chef by Julie Hyzy
4 stars
R-0

The sequel to State of the Onion.

Once again, Ollie finds herself in the middle of a mess. Right during the holidays. Naturally. Murphy's Law, I tell you.

From the back of the book--
White House executive chef Ollie Paras has a lot on her plate, what with holiday meals to map out, the First Lady's matchmaking plans to deflect, safety classes to take, and terrorist plots to avoid. Oh, and a senator's assistant has been begging Ollie to rig the countrywide gingerbread-man-decorating contest in favor of the senator's kids...
Then, a cautious, kindly electrician is electrocuted, and the First Lady's nephew dies in an apparent suicide when not twenty-four hours before he was happily cleaning shrimp with Ollie. Ollie suspects there's something going on that's fishier than shrimp cocktail. Now, she'll have to watch her back-- and find a killer unlikely to be pardoned...

Now, I LOVED State of the Onion... and Hail to the Chef was good, but I confess I was a little disappointed. The mystery came together pretty well, but I didn't feel like it had the rich detail that the first book had. I really really missed the quirks. Like Cyan's eye color-- in SotO it changes everyday, but in HttC it's only mentioned once. I missed that. And there wasn't much interaction with Tom, the Secret Service love interest. Understandable, since he's assigned to the President and there wasn't much of him in this one either, but still. Their interactions were fun.

It was still really pretty good. Just not quite as good as I wanted it to be. I'm still hoping there'll be more though....